by Jim Butcher
"How the hell did he—?"
"Haven't you ever been drunk?"
Dave held up his soda can. "I only drink Coke," he said, smiling. He took a swig.
Sam stood up from the love seat and let Jess sit down to play.
"Scoot over, newbie," Jess told Dave. "You're in my ass-kicking zone." Dave moved to the other cushion, over far enough so his hairy leg wouldn't brush Jess's—they were both wearing shorts—but Jess sat down and rubbed their thighs together, making silly sounds like one of the Three Stooges.
"Stop it!" Dave said, smashing himself against the arm of the love seat. "I feel like a fag on this thing."
Sam picked up his pizza plate and beer mug from the milk-crate end table. "Well, it was free and I was poor," he said. "And you are a fag."
"Where are you going?" Dave asked.
"To take care of the ghost."
"Want me to come with you?"
"Why?"
"To protect you. And to see this spook you've been talking so much about."
"Be my guest."
Dave furrowed his brow as if considering it, but finally shook his head. "Nah. I'll take your word for it."
"Whatever," Sam said. As he stepped over a pile of dirty clothes and Red Bull cans to get to the kitchen, he heard Dave ask, "So when Casper drowned .. . was there shit in the toilet?"
And Jess, ignoring him, said, "No Cheat-Li this time, Dave. And no E. Honda, either!"
The kitchen table was indeed floating, an old rusty patio table hovering three inches off the linoleum. The crusty paper plates, soda cans, and credit card offers had slid to the floor to make room for Casper's game of solitaire. The cards floated, too: Casper was invisible.
"Goddammit," Sam said, picking up forks, spoons, and an experimental bong made out of a fishbowl and two eggbeaters. "Look at the mess you made."
He threw the silverware in the sink, and it rattled off the dirty plates back onto the floor. "Dammit." Sam ignored them and set the bong on the counter.
The fridge was a kegerator, with a keg inside and a tap on the door. Soda, mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup lined the shelves; most of his food came from boxes in the freezer or from the deep-fat fryers at the closest Burger King.
He pulled the tap on the fridge and poured beer into his cup. "Why do you always do this when company's over?" he asked Casper. "Here I am trying to have a good time with my bros, and you try to screw it up. You're going to scare off Dave, you know, the same way you scared off Samantha. One friend down, one to go."
Casper ignored him and kept laying out cards.
Sam smirked. "Why do you play that game anyway? You never win. It's depressing."
The ghost paused, as if considering the question. Then he picked up the cards, shuffled, and dealt seven to himself and seven to the empty spot across from him; he laid the remaining stack in the middle and started sorting his hand.
"Go fish?" Sam said. "No thanks. I've got a life." He said it, but what would he be doing if he didn't have friends over? Playing Street Fighter by himself? He had done it before. And sometimes he slouched on the love seat, watching Blades of Glory or Ricky Bobby late into the night, feeling so empty he almost wept.
Casper threw a card at him.
"Queen of hearts," Sam said. "Coming out of the closet?"
The ghost threw a run of clubs at him: seven, eight, nine.
"So that's why six was afraid of seven. Spoooooky."The beer filled his cup to the top, surfaced with foam. He took a drink and sighed. "Ahhh. It's not quite like the head your momma used to give, but it sure is good."
Casper sprayed cards everywhere. He threw the patio table on its side, blasted open cupboards, and exploded boxes of Kix and macaroni. Sam's mug shattered and he dodged the amber waterfall, arching his back and holding the shattered cup away from his shirt and shorts. The cold brew splashed his feet; shards bounced off them.
Sam shut his eyes, furrowed his brow, and as loud as he could, shouted, "Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetkjuice!"
The spilt cereal, pasta, and paper crumples swirled one last time on the floor, and then Casper's wind disappeared.
Sam sighed. The skin beneath his eyes felt heavy. "I'm too old for this shit." He was twenty-five. He threw the broken glass in the trash can and dried off with a towel.
Back in the front room, Jess and Dave sat wide-eyed on the love seat. "What the hell happened?" Dave asked.
Sam smiled. "Casper's like a kid; he just wants attention. So you piss him off, insult his momma, and he makes a mess and leaves. It's almost impossible to keep the house clean."
"Check out what he did to your SNES," Jess said, straightening his glasses.
The vintage Super Nintendo, disconnected, sat on its side against the far wall. Its wires hung out of the entertainment system, and the TV screen had turned blue. Jess and Dave held the unplugged controllers.
"I think Jess was just mad 'cause I was winning," Dave said, "so he yanked his joystick."
"You weren't winning." Jess put air quotes around the word. "You landed a few uppercuts and were jumping around like a dick, waiting for the timer to run out."
"Whatever," Dave said, "I pwn."
From the other side of the room, Sam's Frisbee flew into Dave's head—thock!
"Ow! What the—?!"
A pencil tried to stab his eye. He dodged and it stuck in the wall behind him. "Jesus—who the hell?"
"It's Casper," Jess said.
"Would you stop with that ghost bullshit? Who else is here?"
"No one," Sam replied, glancing around the room. The attacks had come from different places; Casper could have been anywhere. "He must be fucking pissed: he's never tried to poke out someone's eye before."
"Look," Jess said, pointing at the TV.
In the dust on the screen, words began to appear, as if the ghost was running a finger through the filth. He filled in letters at random, playing a three-word puzzle: one word on top, one in the middle, and one on the bottom, Wheel of Fortune-style.
Dave squinted and leaned forward. "Ha ... r ... wa ... Ha-r-wa. What's that, Chinese? How are you doing that? With magnets or something?"
"There's more," Jess said as letters continued to develop. He took off his glasses, steamed them up with his breath, and cleaned them off on his yellow shirt.
"The middle one's 'or,'" Sam said. " 'Or' what?" he asked Casper. "And why'd you try to kill my Nintendo?"
" 'Harts,'" Dave said, reading the top line as it filled in. "What the hell's 'harts'?"
Jess put on his glasses and wrinkled his nose. "Dude, I think he means 'hearts.'"
Sam crossed his arms. "Illiterate spook." The last few letters fell into place and the message was clear: "Harts," it said, "or war."
Sam shook his head. "Whatever, man. Cards are for losers. We're playing video games." He used his shirt to clean the TV screen, then stepped back and waited for Casper's outburst, waited for the lightbulb to shatter and the bunny ears to hop off the TV—waited for his dumbbells to fly at Dave's head. The blue screen buzzed. The house creaked. Dave lifted his butt and farted.
"Aw, dude!" Jess exclaimed, plugging his nose and fanning the air.
"Jesus," Sam said, spraying some Febreze he found on the floor. "Sodomy Hussein did have weapons of ass-destruction."
Dave grimaced. "Sorry."
"Why don't you go dump that nuclear waste?" Sam asked.
"I don't know." Dave turned a little red. "Afraid we'll hear the splash?" "No."
"Afraid of Casper?"
"No." He picked up the controller and riddled with the buttons. "I don't believe in that crap. I'm not a two-year-old."
"Yes, you are." "No, I'm not." "Yes,you are." "Nuh-uh."
Sam smirked and crossed his arms. "Don't worry, kiddo. Casper stays out of the crapper."
" 'Cause that's where he died?" Dave asked. "No, 'cause that's where I shit. Of course it's because that's where he died. And if he does go in there, which will never happen in a million, billion, trillion ye
ars, just scream 'Beetlejuice' three times and he'll go away."
"How the hell does that work?" Dave asked. "Is that really some kind of ancient incarnation?"
"Aside from the fact that you're an illiterate douche," Sam said, "no. The landlord says Casper hates that movie, thinks you'll make him watch it."
"Not a big Michael Keaton fan," Jess added. "But he's okay with the original Batman because of Jack Nicholson. Now would you just go?"
"Okay, okay." Dave excused himself to the bathroom and farted as he walked.
"Dude!" Jess vacated the love seat, plugging his nose.
After the stink had cleared, Sam hooked up the Super Nintendo and turned on Street Fighter. "Care for a quickie?" he asked.
"Sure, big boy."
"Ken versus Ryu?"
"You know it.
"Classic."
"Just like the old days."
"Carpet stretcher."
"Twat."
"Your momma."
"Dave's momma."
"Hey!" Dave called from the bathroom. "For the last time, I'm not a fucking llama! I've just got a long neck!"
Sam and Jess chuckled and tapped their controllers together as if they were toasting beer mugs, something they had done since middle school, back when they had bowl cuts and liked to play Ninja Turtles. Jess was his only friend the ghost hadn't run off. Not that he'd had many friends.
They went to sit on the love seat—and Casper shoved it out from beneath them; they landed in dust bunnies, a crusty sock, and a school of Goldfish crackers.
"Ouch," Sam said. "I think a Dairy Queen token's lodged in my ass."
"I—"Jess began. And then the love seat charged them.
Sam dodged.
Jess didn't.
The piece of furniture rammed into his shoulder. He fell over and the seat reared, its front leg poised over his head. It plunged—and Sam caught it, hands under the bottom as if he were lifting one side. "Move!" he yelled, muscles standing out on his neck, love seat bucking against him, dry-humping his leg. Jess rolled away.
Sam let go of the love seat and it crashed down. It tried to head butt him. He and Jess sidestepped it and went for the front door, but Casper blocked it with the dresser where Sam stored his DVDs. Sam and Jess retreated to the kitchen doorway, crunching Red Bull cans and tripping in dirty clothes.
Something hit the door behind them. They jumped. Metal points stuck through the door at head level. "Dude," Jess said, "is that..-.?" "A salad fork," Sam replied.
A cleaver hit and poked out of the wood. Plates shattered against the door, knives stabbed it. It was hollow. It wouldn't last long.
Puffed up with air, the love seat feinted toward them; it scooted left, then scooted right.
"What the hell is its problem?" Jess asked, rubbing his shoulder. "Dave's fart?"
Sam ignored him. He shouted, "Beetlejuice, Beetle-juice, Beet/ejuicel"
The love seat paused. The racket behind the kitchen door came to a halt, and somewhere a faucet dripped. After a few seconds, Sam's muscles began to relax. "Phew, I think it's—"
The love seat reared and stomped; the knives continued to hack through the door. They were almost through. "Shit," Jess said, "what do we do?" Red boxer shorts lay tangled in the laundry. Glancing at the love seat, Sam grabbed for them. The love seat feinted again and he shot upright, freeing the shorts.
"Dude," Jess said; he pointed at the Ninja Turtle on the boxers and raised an eyebrow.
"Shut up," Sam said. "I've got an idea." He nudged Jess aside with his elbow and held the shorts out in front of the kitchen door like a matador taunting a bull.
The love seat scuffed its front legs on the carpet. It snorted out a cloud of hair and dust.
"Toro," Sam said, staring it down, sweat on his brow. "Toro, you springy son of a bitch—your momma was an ottoman!"
That did it: the love seat charged.
Sam held his ground, held his ground—then leapt aside as the bull of wood and soiled upholstery smashed its head through the door. It lodged in the bottom panel, ripping itself on the jagged edges as it tried to pull out.
"The bathroom!" Sam shouted, grabbing Jess by the shirt. "Go, go, go!"
Sweaters and flannels groped for their legs, tried to trip them up in a tangle of sleeves. A pair of boxer briefs with a hole worn in the crotch flapped up like a green bat. It whipped Jess in the face, knocking off his glasses.
"Dude!" Jess bent to feel for them, and—crunch— stepped right on them.
With the crack of wood and the tearing of upholstery, the love seat finally freed itself from the door. It whirled around, stuffing billowing out of it like fatty tissue. And behind it, through the hole it had made, knives wandered. Knives—and the bong made of the fishbowl and the eggbeaters.
"Oh my God," Sam said. "No ... no." Jess stood up, holding his broken glasses. Sam seized his wrist and screamed, "Run!"
In the narrow hall, Sam fumbled along the frame above the bathroom door. "Shit, shit, shit—where is it?"
The doorknob featured a hole through which you could pop open the lock. For a makeshift key, Sam usually used a straightened paper clip, hidden above the door. "It isn't here!" he said, groping. The fishbowl bong crept to the mouth of the hallway. "Beetlejuice!" Sam exclaimed, but the bong just rotated its beaters, making a chuckling sound. It turned to the knives. They looked at each other and nodded. "Dude," Jess said, clutching at him blindly. "Found it!" Sam jammed the paper clip into the hole and popped the lock.
The knives darted forward—and lodged in the wood as Sam slammed the door.
"Hey!" Dave pulled up his pants to cover his lap. He still sat on the toilet, holding a copy of JC Penney's Big and Tall. "Fags!" He beat at them with the catalogue. "Get out!"
Sam grabbed the catalogue from him. "We can't. Casper's gone Michael Myers on us.".
Dave raised an eyebrow. "That guy from Austin
Powers?"
Sam whopped him over the head with Big and Tall, then threw it to the floor. "He tried to kill us," Sam said.
"Ooooh. Fags."
The bathroom was so small you could take a crap on the toilet and puke in the bathtub at the same time (Sam had done it before, the night Samantha dumped him because Casper had given her an atomic wedgie). With three people, the room was even smaller. So Sam stepped into the tub and made room.
Dave hopped up and down a little on the seat.
Sam frowned. "Done yet?"
He shook his head. "Dangler."
"It stinks like a bagful of assholes in here," Jess said. He put on his glasses, which sat crooked on his face, the light arm bent away from his head. One of the lenses had popped out, and Jess squinted with the affected eye. "How do I look?"
Sam smirked. "Like a dangler."
There was a plop, and Dave sighed. He reached for the toilet paper. "If there's really a ghost," he said, "why don't you move?"
Sam crossed his arms. "Because. I signed a lease. Besides, it's never been this bad. He was just a pain in the ass before."
"What's his problem anyway?" Dave asked, mummifying his hand in the paper; he was good at clogging toilets.
Sam ignored him and stared at his shampoo bottle. "I told you already: he's an attention whore."
"The landlord says he was a lonely old fart," Jess pitched in. "An old card shark. No friends, no family, just a goldfish: Gold Bond, or something like that. Dude, tell Dave about the goldfish."
Sam sighed and looked down at his hands. "Fine," he said. He sighed again, feeling that heaviness in his chest like the last time he'd told the story, or like those nights he sat on the love seat alone, watching Ninja Turtles or something. "Casper—I can't remember his real name, but... he liked to pour Coors or Smirnoff or whatever he was drinking into Gold Bond's fishbowl. Liked to shoot the shit with the fish, talk about the weather and the Seahawks—"
"Liked to argue with him about who'd do the dishes," Jess said.
Sam nodded. "Guess the landlord saw dirty forks and spoons
in the fishbowl a couple times. And he found cards in there, too, an unfinished game of go fish.
"Anyway, one night Casper poured too much Everclear into the water and found Gold Bond belly-up—"
"The landlord heard all this from the police," Jess explained. "They kind of filled in what they didn't know."
"That's right. So Casper gets all smash-faced and decides to give Goldie a good old funeral flush. But before he can send him out to sea, he gets real sick, starts throwing up. He passes out, falls into the toilet, and—"
"Wakes up with a ghastly hangover," Jess said, grinning. "And the sad part is Gold Bond wasn't dead. Just blacked out."
"Really?" Dave asked, breaking off the toilet paper. "Yeah," Jess continued, "the cops found him feeding on Casper's puke."
Sam nodded. "End of stupid, pointless, and totally depressing story."
Dave frowned at the floor, toilet paper still wrapped around his hand. "Damn," he said. "It's kind of like . . . Romeo and Juliet. So what happened to Gold Bond?"
Sam shrugged and picked at some soap scum on the shower stall, suddenly taking an interest in cleaning after months of ignoring the buildup.
Love Seat Solitaire • 283
"We don't know what happened to him," Jess said. "But we made a killer bong out of his fishbowl."
"And who really gives a shit?" Sam interjected.
"Well," Dave said, lifting one buttock to wipe, "Casper obviously gives a shit. Have you ever tried being nice to him? Maybe he just needs a friend."
Sam chuffed. "What he needs is a quick trip into Egon's containment unit. You know what? Just drop it. I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Well," Dave looked at the strip of toilet paper he'd just used, "if this were my house and there really was a ghost, I'd give him a big old hug and—" He shot up off his seat, flipped, and landed headfirst in the toilet. The water bubbled and churned, muffling his scream. His bare ass poked up in the air.
"Crap!" Sam said. He stepped out of the tub, reaching for Dave's legs. Dave kicked aimlessly; his sneaker cracked the bridge of Sam's nose.
Sam stumbled, tears flooding his eyes, hot blood gushing down his chin and soaking his shirt. He cursed, slapped a hand to his face, tasted something coppery.
